On Tuesday September 9, a group of faith leaders, including Most Reverend Bishop John Wester of Salt Lake City; Rabbi David Saperstein, the Director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism; Reverend Samuel Rodriguez, the President of the National Hispanic Leadership Conference and Dr. Jim Ryan the Council Executive for the Colorado Council of Churches launched a “Tour of the Faithful” campaign in order to advocate for the need for immigration reform as the nation moves toward elections this November. The campaign, entitled “Moral Voices Unite for Immigration Reform” is a collaborative work of different faith groups hosting 18 events around the country drawing attention to the need for reform on behalf of the human rights of all persons residing in the United States. In doing this, faith communities are acknowledging that the treatment of immigrants in the US is not in line with the tenets of their faith and as Patty Cuthbert, the moderator for the launch, explained, they’re “not letting politicians ignore the issues” as the elections approach.

While the month long tour is already underway, the faith leaders who spoke at the teleconference agree that this is not simply a pre-election action, but a collaboration that will continue after the new Congress and President are seated in order to advocate for immigration policy reform. Among the issues they will be bringing to political leaders are the preservation and unification of families, movement away from the current enforcement policies of raids and deportation, legal protection for immigrants including greater authority for judges to protect the human rights of immigrants, and the development of a bi-partisan coalition to act on behalf of this issue.

The events which will be hosted by “Tour of the Faithful” include prayer vigils, detention facility visits, workshops and rallies. For more information visit www.tourofthefaithful.org.

In the wake of Hurricane Gustav, we’ve been trying to be in touch with our diocesan members in the south who have been working to recover. With so much loss of power and resources it’s been hard to get in touch with most, but Tom Constanza (Diocese of New Orleans) reports that the diocese is working on assessing the situation of New Orleans. He says there has been no loss of life, but that there have been extensive problems with electricity and that there are massive outages throughout the diocese that may take weeks to repair. Becky Reiners (Diocese of Baton Rouge) has also been in touch and reports that the situation there is very challenging with gas, food and water all in short supply. She reports that her own diocese as well as that of Lafayette, Lake Charles and Houma-Thibodaux have all been hard hit.

Becky explained that help is welcome from supporters but that those that want to help should NOT send clothes, but that financial support is really what is needed right now. She added that gas cards could be helpful in allowing the people to get back on the roads. Catholic Charities USA is taking the lead in coordinating the efforts down there.

If you would like to provide financial support to these efforts you can:

Send checks to
Catholic Charities USA
2008 Hurricanes
PO Box 17141
Baltimore, MD 21297-1141

If you prefer to direct support to a particular diocese the contact information for our Roundtable Members are listed below.

Tom Constanza (New Orleans) 504-596-3097 tcostanza@archdiocese-no.org

Rob Gorman (Houna-Thibodaux 985-876-0490 rgorman@htdiocese.org

Becky Reiners (Baton Rouge) 225-387-0561 x405 Breiners@ccsbr.org

Paul Thomas (Beaumont) 409-924-4315 pthomas@catholiccharitiesbmt.org

Deacon Sam Dunning (Galveston-Houston) 713-741-8731 sdunning@diog.org

Una Hargrave (Lafayette) 337-261-5545 una@dol-louisiana.org

Rev. Henry Mancuso (Lake Charles, LA) 337-439-2646 mancusoh1@cs.com